Shandi Mitchell has a film script in production and publishers in Canada, the U.S. and U.K. for her first novel. Shandi Mitchell has a film script in production and publishers in Canada, the U.S. and U.K. for her first novel. (Shandi Mitchell)

Nova Scotia writer Shandi Mitchell has seen her two talents — screenwriting and writing novels — lead to unprecedented recognition in 2008.

The 44-year-old, who writes from a small office on the banks of the Shubenacadie Canal, in Wellington, N.S., says the year has been "extraordinary."

Her debut novel has been snapped up by Canadian, British and American publishers and will be published next August.

And Wednesday the Canada Council announced her as winner of the $15,000 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for artists in mid-career.

She earned that award for a film script called The Disappeared. "I was quite stunned to hear the news. I didn't know a script of mine had been forwarded for consideration," she told CBC News on Thursday.

Mitchell has been working in film for years, including critically acclaimed features The Hanging Garden, Beefcake, and The Short Cherries, and already has a production plan for The Disappeared.

"It's an ensemble character piece about six men who are lost in the North Atlantic facing their mortality. It's about family and brotherhood, betrayal, madness," Mitchell said.

Novel depicts 'razor edge of life and death'

She was hoping to shoot next summer, but the project may have to be pushed back one more year, because next August her first novel, Under This Unbroken Sky, is to be published.

"It's about two immigrant families who come to Canada in search of a better life, and it's the 1930s on the Canadian Prairies," she said.

"It's really a look at that razor edge of life and death. I have real fascination for that simultaneous edge of light and dark, beauty and savagery, and I just like to look at all sides of humanity."

Her story certainly caught the attention of the publishing world. She was able to sign with an agent, who sold the book first to Penguin Canada and then to Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the U.K. and HarperCollins in the U.S.

"I was amazed when the agent said yes, and everything else beyond that has been sheer icing," said Mitchell, who called the triple deal "lucky."

Mitchell said she thinks combining screenwriting and writing novels has helped strengthen her skills as a storyteller.

"One of the new things I discovered working in fiction was I could be inside a character, I could be in their mind, I could feel them. Where in film you have to actually observe a character's behaviours," she said.

"Even though writing fiction allows me to go into the characters, film allows me a palette that no other medium gives. And each makes each other's work better somehow. I can borrow from the two worlds to take the other in different directions."

Mitchell said the $15,000 award will help free her time to devote to her writing.